Desperate for food after a grizzly bear ravaged his garden, Tom Oar embarks on a last-ditch deer hunt. Marty Meierotto begins to establish his winter trapline, breaking fresh trail in the uncharted wild. In the Ruby Valley of Montana, Rich Lewis pursues a marauding wolf pack that has slaughtered a neighbor's cattle. And in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Eustace Conway must deal with Scout, a careless intern with "a dose of city boy in him."

Rich and his hounds track Rich's nemesis, the killer mountain lion Three-Toes, across the length of Montana's Ruby Valley. In Alaska, a young prot g brings Marty the new snowmobile engine he's been waiting for. Eustace races the winter frost to seed his field in North Carolina and in Northwest Montana, Tom receives a commission from a neighbor to build a primitive bow, with a deadline that puts his endurance to the test.